Before Times
Primordial ooze and jungles thick
with steaming plants and trees,
themselves as different from what we know today
as from their times to these.
And pulling out from muck and mire
amphibians, reptiles, and such,
exhibiting peculiar bodies
with multi-colors and scales,
claws and webs, pivoted eyes,
not missing very much of what transpires
about them, and what will threaten or appease.
Not showing fear (as we think we know it)
of falling to some fiend-like clutch,
itself escaping for one moment more,
one moment more,
before it, too, slips and slithers
beneath the enfolding swamp,
there to wait with fossilized patience the
times which are to come.
The clashing mountains, scouring beds
by lazy, flowing glacial masses, slowly moving,
surely making future, awing
mountain passes.
During all this work the fossils rest,
seeing, in turn, Life's strict tests.
Which place each life-form on the environmental stage,
there to twist, there to turn
to Nature's orders, from Her to learn,
or else to die, to become extinct,
forever more to join the Saber Tooth and Giant Boar.
Themselves well-meant and hearty forms
that could not keep to Nature's norms for survival,
or for lasting place on that Earthscape seen from afar,
by whatever essence taking pleasured view
of life on this planet, both old and new...
Becoming
Down through millennia surviving against what?
Blindly striving towards new forms, new shapes
that tout DNA's
promise to a dumb world.
Savoring individually what no group could,
but driving
onwards, onwards, onwards...
Till that long ago Pliocene Spring...
Matted hair, warm bodies too, quick to move
from threatening reptilian approach,
agile minds requiring learned response
to Nature's requirements,
gentle or harsh, reasoning or not...
The Process
Oh, how many types, antlered or horned,
big toothed or beaked
sheathed egg or born,
from in utero to pouch
or crisp, choking air,
all of them experiments on what possibly
is fair morphic play, for the
Cosmic Magician
and the amazing DNA...
A molecule so astounding it strikes
dumb your wits, and watching its maneuvers
with elemental form, causes only wonder
that Life's special norms
can so seldomly be split.
Though the chances seem infinite
they simply do not occur, unless selective
pressure requiring more or less fur
present themselves...
Or a trait is not lethal,
so continues to exist,
or one that brings its owner to demise,
for reasons more profound than we can
properly surmise.
But meaningful all the same and incredibly
well-working, so very few anomalies are found
to be lurking
in this marvelously intricate scheme.
The Confusion and Wonder
If each form could go on forever, forever would not be,
since such concepts as these come from what
seemingly is
but certainly not here to see...
The trick played by intelligence on unsuspecting
DNA expression is that we, and we alone,
are here to play forever
in gardens of DNA's delightful manipulation.
Such molecular delights, all forms so infinite
in spatial abode, and the scene so presented
seems so removed from atomic
attraction and molecular interaction...
If that should confound us, let it not be,
for who are we to pretend to know
the meaning and essence of the atom and molecule
(and the where, how, and why of it),
should we care to dwell upon Universal
architecture, and relative Time and Space...
Though we cannot find our position amid
the configuration of the pit
We cannot know even if it's there,
and despairing after such thoughts and
dreams as these can lead into realms
that make phantasy mundane.
Or perhaps a ploy that even Norse gods
like Loki would not have been
guilty of such teasing, inimical, quasi-thoughtful
traps...
Thoughts from our species memory so dim--
yet fixed in ancient, musty portions of our brain.
Forever there, but distantly known...
Drawn out in deep moments of contemplative dream,
to reassure our nature of a place out there,
in there
around there
about there
always there,
mocking there,
and Here
Together, as if a whirlwind raged
along that soulful continuum,
stretching from Archaeozoic to Holocene...
The Journey
Together culminating in a regulated
body temperature that mocked the massive
Ice Walls, spelling doom for many life-forms,
who could not ride that rage successfully...
But who joined the rest in fossilized splendor,
awaiting a time to expose, to attest...
To what "now" used to be in that present far removed,
yet part of the same Time we marvel at,
and curse for its swiftness with an hour, a day...
and into those decades of Time to come.
Of another "present" out there...
Preparing to be... Setting a stage on which life
will whirl, thrive, ultimately succumb...
To that same Agency--Death...
Whatever It may be, since we're part of a
continuum along space, sky and sea
(Earth and water, too).
PART II
The Essence of a molecule, the re-occurring DNA,
spring up and out and then around,
the space that fills our Universe.
That fills the void that never ends...
That has no middle and travels, without bends,
unless
such exist beyond our ken
(and we can only suppose we know...).
Or themselves in grandiose style,
"...how Earth, Solar system, Galaxy compile a system,
mechanical, beguiling--",
completely logical in the mammalian, primate terms we call Human,
though ourselves protest the anomaly...
of what we are....
The Essence
One-hundred trillion cells, atoms from a star,
composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, too,
all inorganic, insensate, none alive,
in any true sense (according to our definition)...
Yet all together a human make, to live, function, procreate.
Cognitive, behaving, believing in dreams
that well up from below,
where DNA schemes to find what pleases its morphic urges.
Scrambling, re-molding, trying again to find
that true form...
the Initial Egg--
The Passage and Understanding
Onward to the present point in histories yet to come,
to start again, anew, casting Fate in endless Time...
Construing "place" with what is,
rather than what will always be--
And somehow knowing the phenomenon of Thought
is endless, like a great roiling, dark and mysterious Sea,
itself lapping unknown and distant shores,
that despoil returning when once explored...
By that marvel intelligence,
welling up from below the sensate consciousness,
...the Abyssal flow...
Emanating from the realm of DNA,
though the "how and why of it," our thoughts can't say...
Indeed, we cannot comprehend our shape
and why we stand on end,
instead of going about on fours, well-balanced,
neither "tippy," awkward, nor as we often are,
compared anew
in Primate Lore--
Abyss and Hope
On we spin aboard our "dust speck,"
well employed for so tiny a galactic crumb...
Always whirling, always circling, our hale, but aging Sun--
And we shall ponder,
studying fossils, who waited patiently for us to come...
DNA marvels, molecular offspring--
Bearers of four fingers and a thumb...
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